Roman Games(56)
“I will see to it personally,” Pliny murmured.
“It took another hour for the word to get to me,” added Valens.
Martial struck in, “Your excellent officer and myself were pursuing our researches into the brothels of Rome. We were visiting our, what was it, sixth or seventh Temple of Eros? The proprietors, I must say, have all been terribly obliging. They’ve all invited us back any time for a night on the house. Wonderful thing, being a policeman. We hadn’t gotten near this neighborhood yet, but there’s another Temple of Eros down there across the street. You can see it from the window. I reckon that’s what our friend was doing, watching out for someone. Don’t know why he would have killed himself, though.”
“Don’t you?” sighed Pliny wearily. “Here’s matter for your pen, my friend, if you would write in a somber vein: this pathetic creature, this ‘boy’ who was never allowed to be a child. What happens to the pretty boys when they lose the power to please us? Whether they are house slaves like Ganymede or hustlers on the make like your Diadumenus and his little friends. What happens to them, Martial, when they no longer amuse? I think you know the answer but I imagine you’ve never looked at it before. Look now. Ganymede believed himself to be betrayed. What else could he do but die?”
The poet started to say something, then closed his mouth and looked away.
“You’re right about him being betrayed, sir,” said the centurion. “While we were waiting for you I interviewed the brothel keeper. Take a look at this.” He handed Pliny the message addressed to Marcus Ganeus. “You notice it’s signed ‘L’.”
“Patricide!” thundered Pliny, “the most hideous of all crimes!” The vice prefect, flanked by Martial and Valens, shook his fist in Lucius’ face. “Oh, Ganymede wielded the dagger all right, but you, you are the murderer! Do you know the punishment for what you’ve done? It is as ancient as Rome itself. You will be sewn into a leather sack with a cock, a dog, and an ape and thrown into the sea. The animals will tear you to pieces while you drown!”
Seeing himself cornered, Lucius bared his teeth. “Pah! You don’t scare me with your apes and sacks. You’ve no evidence for your ridiculous theory.”
“Haven’t I? Look at this.” Pliny showed him the waxed tablet. “Given to my centurion by the new owner of the Temple of Eros where you told Ganymede to hide. Why arrange his death unless you feared he would incriminate you? Unfortunately for you, Ganymede isn’t dead,” Pliny lied, “and he’s told us everything.”
Lucius’ eyes darted wildly to the door, his muscles tensed, but Valens’ men converged on him from all sides, surrounding him with a ring of steel. His shoulders sagged. The fight drained out of him like air from a punctured bladder.
“It wasn’t just the money.” He spoke in a low voice full of resentment and pain. His face worked with emotion. “In return for my spying on the Jews and the God-fearers, at risk to my own life, he promised me freedom from potestas and money to pay my debts. Then he changed his mind! All because of that little cunt, Phyllis. On his last day alive, we quarreled again. He waved two sheets of paper under my nose and boasted he had a dozen great men by the balls and all he had to do was squeeze. I asked him who he meant but he just laughed. Said it was no business for an imbecile like me. You know what he was like. All my life he humiliated me.
“But I’d made up my mind long before that day to kill him. After all, he’d threatened to kill me, hadn’t he? At first, I expected Pollux to take revenge for his Jewish compatriots and spare me the trouble. When he didn’t, I decided to make it look as if he had. I knew enough about them to make a good show of it.”
Pliny exchanged a look of triumph with Martial: all their guesses had turned out to be right.
“Perhaps you will enlighten us on one point,” said Pliny. “Your father rarely slept alone. How did you choose the one night when he did?”
“By going around the house after everyone was asleep and counting his bed partners, male and female. I did it many times until finally that night I accounted for all of them. I wasn’t surprised. He didn’t like to squander his sexual energy on a night before he had important business to transact. From his wild talk that day I guessed he might have something on for tomorrow. I told Ganymede to meet me in the garden at midnight. I gave him a pouch to wear containing the dagger, which I’d taken from the tablinum, also a thin-bladed knife to insert in the shutter latch, and a piece of charcoal for drawing the candelabrum. I had to pour half a flagon of wine into the boy to get him to stop shaking, the little coward. Merda! I’ve plenty of friends who would gladly have stuck a knife into my father if I asked them to, but none who could scamper up to that window. I was forced to use Ganymede although I knew he was a weakling. When he came down again I washed the blood off him in the fountain and sent him to bed. I told him that everything would be fine if he just kept his head, and it would have been. The only thing I wasn’t prepared for, vice prefect, was—you. No one else in Rome would have worried this case to death like you’ve done.”